As an undergraduate at Spelman College in Georgia, Joy Rutledge faced a conundrum. She excelled at computer programming, even designing websites for fun as a teenager, and knew that a computer science major could lead to financial security. Yet she was also passionate about food systems and the environment, an interest she'd developed living on the 12-acre farm and "living laboratory" in Georgia created by her mother, a public health expert. Rutledge just wasn't sure how to turn that passion into a sustainable career.
It wasn't until she arrived at UC Berkeley that Rutledge glimpsed how she could do both. For two summers, Rutledge participated in the HBCU-Berkeley Environmental Scholars for Change fellowship program, which invites undergraduates from Spelman College, Alabama's Tuskegee University and Georgia's Morehouse College to Berkeley for a summer of research and experiential learning.
Mathew Burciaga/Rausser College of Natural Resources
During her fellowships, Rutledge learned innovative ways to apply her computer science background to addressing food systems and environmental problems. In her second summer with the program, she used satellite data, air quality monitors and conversations with Central Valley residents to identify the surprising human health benefits of massive flooding in the Tulare Lake basin, an agricultural area rife with respiratory illnesses and cancer. This fall, she will begin a doctoral degree in Berkeley's Environmental Science, Policy and Management department, continuing her work on the climate impacts and the environmental justice impacts of land use decisions.
"The program definitely is life-changing," said Rutledge, who graduated from Spelman in 2025 as a computer science major and food studies minor. "Without it, I likely would have stuck to software engineering and not really been able to combine my two passions."
Jointly developed by the department at Berkeley, Spelman College's Food Studies Program and Tuskegee University's College of Agriculture, Environment and Nutrition Sciences, the HBCU-BESC fellowship program works to create "thought leaders" in the food space, according to Kimberly Jackson, program director and biochemistry professor at Spelman. "Part of that is also trying to find different pathways for graduate school," she said. As Rutledge's experience shows, a summer at Berkeley can help.
The program has been a bi-directional endeavor since its inception in 2021, said co-directors Tim Bowles, an agroecologist at Berkeley, and Rosalie Zdzienicka Fanshel, currently a postdoctoral researcher in the department. "We've always been interested in the two-way nature of it," Bowles said.
Courtesy of UC Berkeley's Office of the Chancellor
On one hand, students from historically Black colleges and universities learn about attending graduate school, helping to tackle the underrepresentation of Black professionals in the sciences. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2021, just 9% of workers in science, technology, engineering or math fields were Black, compared to 12% of the adult population. Fellows get financial stipends and housing during the program and later receive support in applying to graduate school. If they enroll in a doctoral program in the UC system, they receive financial support, including a fellowship for their first year of graduate studies, thanks to a grant from the UC-HBCU Initiative.
On the other hand, Berkeley researchers become better mentors by working with talented undergraduate students from HBCUs. "The mentors they're working with on the faculty side are learning about what an HBCU is and how to mentor a student on a really intense research project over this short time period. So there's a lot of learning that happens in both directions," Bowles said. Next spring break, Berkeley students will travel to Spelman and Tuskegee to learn about Black-led sustainable food systems projects in Georgia and Alabama.
Experiential learning, inside and outside of the lab
During their two months at Berkeley, fellows embark on ambitious research plans. Though the fellowship began with a focus on food systems, it has expanded to touch more of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management's research areas, from urban wildlife ecology and forestry to environmental health and water justice. But Fanshel said much of the learning happens outside of the lab. "Research is only one portion of this program," they said. "We do a ton of program activities outside of the research projects. We also do a lot of grad school preparedness workshops."
Mathew Burciaga/Rausser College of Natural Resources
The fellowship cohort takes field trips throughout the Central Valley and Bay Area - one of which, to the town of Allensworth, sparked Rutledge's Lake Tulare research. A small, mostly Latino farming community on the banks of the now-dry lake, Allensworth was founded in the wake of the Civil War by Black professionals hoping to create a college town and community free from Jim Crow laws and racial violence. Today, residents lack safe drinking water and are politically overshadowed by surrounding corporate farms. On the trip, the fellows learned about the history and present-day environmental justice issues that the town and its surrounding communities face.
In Allensworth, Rutledge heard something that surprised her. In 2023, atmospheric rivers drenched Northern California with rain and snow. Downstream of the Sierra Nevada, Lake Tulare - once the biggest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River - reappeared after having been drained for agriculture and other uses a century earlier. As state managers struggled to safely redirect the revived lake's water, nearby communities contended with flooded homes and inundated agricultural land.
But when Rutledge visited with the fellowship program a couple of years later, organizers at the Allensworth Progressive Association said that there also had been environmental health benefits from the lake's return. Nearby communities typically had high levels of Valley fever and cancer that locals attributed to pesticide exposure from agriculture. During the lake's reappearance, its water cooled scorching local summer temperatures and suppressed disease-triggering dust and airborne pollutants.
Intrigued, Rutledge quantified the flood's community health and regional climate impacts using satellite imagery. She found that the large body of water had indeed benefited community health. She also learned about the conflicting interests in the region - for some residents, the lake meant cleaner air and cooler temperatures, but for agricultural operations, it meant lost crops as trees and wheat fields flooded.
"The reason why I think that my project last summer was so successful was because we actually got to talk to the community at Lake Tulare," Rutledge said. "That's what sparked the question about air quality, because residents mentioned they had very serious respiratory problems because of the agricultural dust emissions, and that when the lake returned, the air was cleaner."
"Demystifying" graduate school for a new generation of scientists
The fellowship has grown quickly, from four students in 2022 to seven in 2026, for a total of 25 so far. The scholars support each other during and beyond the fellowship. Former fellow Evan Fewell recalled watching "Love Island USA" nightly with his cohort, and then everyone working hard in their labs the next day.
Courtesy of Alexis Flores
Many of the fellows have never been to the Bay Area before. Together, they adapt quickly to their carless lifestyle, relying on bicycles, public transportation and sidewalks to explore. For students such as Tuskegee's Kai Watts, an environmental scientist, these experiences raised important questions about what it takes to build a walkable city with healthier food options. "That's something that's really important to me on a larger scale," said Watts, who is researching urban ecology and ecosystem services at Berkeley this summer.
Nor does the support end with the summer fellowship. In their doctoral research, Fanshel found that to successfully create graduate school pathways for HBCU students, Berkeley needed to offer more than the occasional Zoom meeting or grad school boot camps. To more holistically support fellows' academic and career growth, Fanshel mentors them year-round, offering post-program cohort meetings and guidance on the graduate school application process.
"We do work that's beyond just this brief exposure to graduate school," Fanshel said.
Fewell, an Army ROTC cadet and rising senior at Tuskegee, did the fellowship program twice. The second time, he researched the kinematics of jumping spiders, studying how the fuzzy arachnids use hydraulics in their legs rather than muscles to leap through the air. Despite his fascination with wildlife research, Fewell said he might not have considered a career in it without his Berkeley experience, although he is considering one now. He certainly would not have considered graduate school on the West Coast; growing up on the East Coast, Fewell wasn't familiar with the UC system. Instead, he would still be flummoxed by the process of applying to STEM graduate programs. Before the fellowship, Fewell didn't realize that many programs offer full funding in exchange for teaching or conducting research, and he thought that getting a doctoral degree took far more years than it typically does.
Mat Burciaga/Rausser College of Natural Resources
"In my head, I'm thinking, you go to grad school, you have to pay out of pocket, and it's going to take 20 years," he said. "I had no idea what it took to really do it." After his fellowships, Fewell now knows exactly what it takes to apply to graduate STEM programs, including how to network with faculty.
"This fellowship has these classes that really explain grad school and really demystify it, and those helped tremendously," Fewell said.
For fellows who arrive already planning to attend graduate school, the program still has a lot to offer. Morehouse student Ryan Riley knew before he stepped foot on the Berkeley campus that he wanted to run his own research lab someday. He's also interested in staying in the Chicago area, where he is from, for graduate school. Nonetheless, he still is benefitting from his Berkeley research experience, during which he is studying the fate of colonies of nonnative Argentinian fire ants in California.
"This is my first research experience in an official capacity," Riley said. "I've gained valuable connections, and I gained a valuable skill in just going out and learning what the research process is like."
As Rutledge prepares to return to Berkeley this fall to begin her studies, she reflected on how the fellowship program made her confident that she belongs here. When she arrived after her freshman year for her first HBCU-BESC fellowship, she was intimidated by being at such a big institution that produces so much research. She wondered how she would keep up.
The fellowship quickly allayed her fears. "The program did an amazing job at instilling a sense of belonging and at making sure we saw that our ideas, our thoughts and our perspectives were valuable," she said, "within the research - and in general."
